


spines to light the deep they walk

by soundofez



Category: Soul Eater
Genre: (Wes Evans), (vaguely at least), Alien Culture, Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Merpeople, Alternate Universe - Pirate, Culture Shock, Merperson Soul, Other, Sirens, mermaid sirens are weird and sketchy af
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-03-21
Updated: 2017-03-21
Packaged: 2018-10-08 15:23:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,922
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10389771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofez/pseuds/soundofez
Summary: The ocean is unforgiving. You had known this, of course, by the abstraction of Papa's ship creaking in storms, but you hadn'tknownit until your tiny dinghy had capsized and knocked you upside the head.When you wake, you wonder if it had been a nightmare, because your boat is upright and the sun scorches your face. You sit up and immediately spot a white-haired boy slouched on the prow of your boat, bare-chested, snacking happily with too-sharp teeth on a raw fish.He throws himself overboard at your shriek, prompting another shout from you. "Wait!"But he doesn't come back, at least not then, and as time passes you wonder if he hadn't been part of your dreams, a night terror fleeing from the light of day.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redphlox](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redphlox/gifts).



> This fic was the pilot to **[wish upon a song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118822)**.
> 
> Warnings for implied/off-screen mind control and all the questionable things that come with it.
> 
> this is also on **[tumblr](https://soundofez.tumblr.com/post/158655626723/spines-to-light-the-deep-they-walk-1)** , if that's the platform you prefer.

You are jealous. The human is _yours_ , not the ocean's, so when the above throws her from her little island, you drag her back onto the wooden contraption and watch to ensure that she does not slip fatally into the ocean. Once the above has calmed, you right the human's island, catch yourself a snack, and pull yourself up into the above to wait for her to wake.

When she does, though, it is with an otherworldly screech that sends you into panicked flight.

So you try once more to sing her from the above, as you have been ever since you found her, but as before she doesn't come to your call. _Frustrating._ Does this human have no ears? Maybe that's how she put up with that awful sound she had chased you away with.

You should just leave, should just find another human to be your thrall. The islands of humans are not hard to find: the ocean carries news of their passing for leagues in the currents. Still, this one fascinates you: you've never seen a human alone in the above before, nor have you ever heard of one resisting the song of your kind.

(You do not think to wonder if your song is as other as the rest of you.)

* * *

Most nights you think you hear someone singing in your dreams, foreign and familiar all at once. When you wake, the sound lingers in your mind, but it seems almost to come from the ocean itself, deep and resonant and dangerous. It calls you like a fatal fall, at once senseless and compelling, tugging at your heart even as you dismiss it with your mind.

Then comes the second storm.

Like the first, it feels unreal, for you are Maka Albarn, daughter of the greatest pirate to roam the seas, and how could you possibly die without having done at least as much as your mother had done before you?

Like the first, you wake in the morning with the sun scorching your face and a white-haired boy perched on the prow of your boat. This time, though, he's not sucking marrow from fishbones: instead, he watches you with wary, red eyes.

"So you weren't a dream after all," you rasp to yourself, leaning over the side of the boat to splash your face.

"You can talk?" the boy asks, astonished.

You stare at him, blinking away the seawater dripping into your eyes. He's less human than even his eyes and hair suggest, you realize: his tongue is just a little too long to be human, his skin a little too glittery silver, his fingers a little too spidery and webbed.

"Of course I can talk," you say warily, your mind drifting to stories of sea folk who would steal sailors away. "Who are you?"

He's staring at you, too, his head tilted curiously. "I am _Soul_ ," he says, but his name is less said than sung. "Do you have a calling, too?"

You don't know whether he means your name or your purpose, for his name ( _Soul_ ) had somehow managed to encompass both. "I'm Maka," you offer hesitantly.

" _Ma Ka_." He repeats your name dubiously, weaving into it all the wariness you had felt as you said it. "You are human? Not siren? Not enthralled?"

A chill traces down your spine. "If I'm human, will you take me?"

Soul's eyes flicker, and you realize that he has a translucent set of eyelids under his more human ones. "If you are siren— no, if you are enthralled, I will know why I have not yet taken you. You shouldn't have screeched at me," he says reproachfully.

You can't help but snort at his tone. "I'm human," you admit, almost boastfully.

A perplexed scowl falls across his face. "But you can speak, and you do not come to the song," he argues.

" _You've_ been the one singing at night," you blurt, and indeed, his voice matches perfectly the melody that has been haunting your dreams.

His scowl deepens. "Did Wes send you to give me hope?" he demands, kicking his feet angrily and rocking the boat, making you clutch at its sides. "I should have known no human would be alone in the above," he mutters to himself, glaring down at the ocean.

"Who is Wes?" you ask, bewildered.

He shoots you a venomous look as he slides heavily off the prow, and he hits the water with a loud splash before vanishing into the ocean's depths.

* * *

Wes has always been sly, but he is also your only family, and you know how to read his movements for lies, so you know the moment you ask that he did not send Ma Ka. The revelation sends you back to the human, following the faint echoes in the currents left by her little island.

(You should have known that Wes would not be responsible for Ma Ka. He is not so cruel, and she is like no siren nor thrall you've ever heard of, anyway.)

When you find Ma Ka, the above is conspiring once more to give her to the ocean. This time, though, she is awake and clinging to her island, so you wait for the fickle currents of the above to calm before you offer your aid.

"I thought you were gone," Ma Ka says once you've righted her island.

"I thought you were thrall," you reply, "but it makes no sense for a thrall to stay in the above."

"Why were you surprised that I could talk?"

You shrug. "Humans don't speak," you explain, because it's obvious.

Ma Ka looks skeptical. "Who told you that?"

What a bizarre question. "No one _told_ me," you scoff. "Thralls speak only what their owners have told them to."

"... Thralls? Owner?"

Whoever this being is, she knows surprisingly little. "Humans are enthralled by the first siren they hear," you tell her. "Thralls are very loyal, and very affectionate, and very territorial of their owners. _You_ are not enthralled, so you are not a human."

Ma Ka is very still, but her brows are furrowed so that you can barely see the green of her eyes. "So we're dogs to you."

You mirror her stillness, wary of the fury in her voice. "You are not a dog," you say hesitantly, though you do not know what a dog is. "You have not come to my song."

"You meant to make me a _dog_ ," Ma Ka hisses, standing, and you nearly fling yourself away from the island to escape her boiling rage.

"Soul!" Wes calls, and you follow Ma Ka's distracted gaze to where the mere pokes his head out from the waters. "About your question— oh, is this the one you were talking about? Haven't you enthralled her yet?"

"I'm not his thrall," Ma Ka snaps.

Wes lifts a brow, opens his mouth, and sings. He is sly and soothing and _mere_ , and you are jealous, because Ma Ka is _yours_ —

" **Shut up!** " the human roars, and you and Wes both flee, terrified.

Once you both have regained your wits, Wes rounds on you. "What was that?" he demands. "Why didn't she listen?"

You frown at him. "You knew that she could speak," you realize. "You've _known_ that humans can speak?"

Wes crosses his arms. "Well, yeah. You've heard my thralls, haven't you?"

"Your thralls can barely string a sentence together," you protest. "Ma Ka... she speaks as we do."

Wes closes his eyes at you. (You narrow yours in surprise— he's never been this angry at you.) "She is not enthralled," he explains, as if to a child. "If she were, she would be the same as my thralls."

You try to think of an enthralled Ma Ka, docile and loyal, speaking only your name. The idea fills you with horror, and you suddenly understand the fierce disgust with which Ma Ka had filled her roar. If she had not been resistant to your song, you never would have learned the cleverness of her tongue, of the quickness of her mind. You'd been singing to her thoughtlessly barely an hour ago, oblivious to the true nature of humans, oblivious to the true nature of siren song.

"They're people," you breathe, horrified.

Wes gives you a strange look. "They're humans," he reminds you, as though he knows better than you what that means.

"They're _people_ ," you repeat, insistently, and this time a flicker of understanding crosses Wes's face before belligerent confusion takes over instead.

"What did you just do?" Wes demands, seizing your shoulders.

You kick at his tail and he lets go, cursing. "Don't touch me," you snap at him. "And what are you talking about? I'm not—"

Wes rushes at you, and you barely dodge, your arms and othersome legs working in panicked rhythms through the ocean water. "You sound like a maid," Wes cries, desperately furious as he surges at you again.

"Stop!" you bellow back, and to your surprise, he does.

He turns to look at you, his face twisted in horror. "This is why othersome should not be," he declares lowly, and flees.

* * *

Days later, when your temper has simmered to a self-righteous stew, Soul resurfaces, wild-eyed.

"Go away," you snap at him, but he clutches at the prow of your little stolen dinghy, desperate.

" _Help me,_ " he says, he _begs_ , and you are rocked to your soul with the honest intensity of his plea. "They're coming for me, please, _help me_."

So you do, pulling him unthinkingly into the boat, where he collapses to the floor, dripping sea water everywhere.

You back away from the growing puddle and ask, belatedly, "Why should I help you? You wanted to enthrall me."

He struggles to lift his torso off the floor. "I don't— I mean, I didn't _know_. Please. You're the only one who can help me, now that Wes...." He grimaces as he meets your eyes. "He didn't know better. I know, to you, he tried to... but he was my only family. And you are... _you have to help me_. You're the only one who can. Who _will_."

"That doesn't mean I should," you retort, but your heart aches with the loneliness in his plea, at the raw _truth_. He really has no one else to turn to, and you and your poor bleeding heart can't help but want to help him.

Or maybe that's just the siren magic at work. You scowl at the thought. "I'm not about to risk facing a school of sirens for you."

Soul flops to the bottom of he boat like an oversized fish. "I— I'm sorry," he says, and your heart sinks with dawning, secondhand guilt. "They'll— _I didn't think_ — They're coming for me, _they're following me_ — and now that I'm here, they'll— even if I—"

It takes you but a moment to put the pieces together. "Even if you leave me alone, they'll come?"

Soul cringes. "Yes."

You curse. "Fine. _Fine_. I'll just...." You don't know what you'll do. You curse some more.

"They— They can't go to the shallows," Soul says. "If we go to the shallows, they won't follow."

You frown at him. "The Shallows?" you repeat.

"Yes. Your islands— they go far beyond siren territory—"

" _Islands?_ "

Soul stares up at you. "Yes?"

"Islands don't go anywhere," you tell him, baffled.

He looks down at the boat. "This isn't an island?"

You burst into startled laughter. "This is a _boat_. Islands are— islands are _land_."

He looks back up at you. "What is land?"

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [wish upon a song](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16118822) by [soundofez](https://archiveofourown.org/users/soundofez/pseuds/soundofez)




End file.
